


truth

by Hypomone535



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Love Confessions, Mutual Longing, Mutual Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-04
Updated: 2019-05-04
Packaged: 2020-02-23 21:33:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18710368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hypomone535/pseuds/Hypomone535
Summary: After the Battle of Winterfell





	truth

The lonely halls are quiet, depleted, and mourning.

Tasting like ash, the smell of dirty ruin fills the day making the castle feel empty. And it is, like a tomb of ghosts, scattering Winterfell with used up faces and haunted eyes.  

Tomorrow, when dawn awakens over winter, they’ll gather to burn the dead.  Today’s light was used to stack the bodies and find those they’d loved.  Lyanna.  Jorah.  Theon.  _Edd._

 Jon hates today but tomorrow he hates even more.

A shifting log pops in the hearth when the gentle rap shakes the door.  Remarkably, awfully, fully -Jon watches the violent curl of the flame, his gut quickening in heated response.  A sudden ache to know his mother adds to his grief and he instantly looks down at his hands.  He doesn’t recognize his hands.

“Jon?”

The door swings inward, her tall frame filling his sight, breaking apart his thoughts.  Looking to the whisper, he avoids the drag of her deep eyes.  Bereft from the events of the day, his brow scrunches down hard and his mouth sits in a firm line.  Not knowing what to feel, he looks down at his hands.  They come together in front of him forming a tight knot of twisted fingers.

“Can I come in?”

Those fingers drag over the outside of his palm but he nods, lonely and surrounded by the silence hoping for solitude but thirsty for something that has never passed between his lips.  Though in the light of this day, he isn’t sure if what he desires actually exists in this world.

She’s careful when she approaches him, her soft footsteps and long chain only making a subtle click.  No furs grace her elegant shoulders and he has a thought for the cloak she gifted him.

A part of him is glad it’s gone; he didn’t deserve to ever wear it.  However, the louder side of him mourns, the weight of it on his shoulders painfully absent. It was always a constant reminder of who he was, and even more because _she_ was the one to say it. And that part of him has gone too, hasn’t it?  His identity dismantled by the truth.

“Are you alright?” Sansa speaks directly, her kindness still in the proper place as she looks over him.  “That cut?” She points to the one below his eye, “Has the maester seen it?”

“Dead.” He grunts out like a stupid oaf.  “He’s dead, I mean.  Sam’s the closest we have to a maester now.”

Eyes traveling down, her pink lips part and she steps forward completely into his room and shuts the door.  Making a quick look around, it takes her a moment to find what she needs to satisfy her plan. 

Retrieving her supplies, she steps into his space.  The tip of cloth dips into a mug of water and Sansa smiles gently, “Will you let me?”

His hands unfurl and he shuffles his feet, but offers no other objections to her care.  It turns out her hands are as delicate as her fingers are long.  While she cleans off the dried blood just below his eye, the small pinch settles between her brows.  She is focused in, dedicated to her task, and works without offering him a taste of her eyes…   Clenching his jaw, the spark that she exclusively kindles fills him now.

They stay like this for a moment with the fire and wind moaning a dirge for the recently departed.  She catches her bottom lip between her teeth and the action makes the flash ignite, tingling under his leather.  Instead of flexing into her touch he slightly flinches away from her, whatever madness that exists between them making his blood boil rather than settle.

It’s easy for her to sense, his moods and tactless mannerisms.  And she’s brave with him so there is no hesitation when she asks, “Won’t you tell me what you’re keeping from me?”  She brushes against his cheek again, the cloth light on his skin.

“I’m not your brother.”

It just pops out like a bad bite of fruit.  It tastes bitter and unfair and for a moment it’s so painful to say, that all he wants is for her to lament with him and feel his loss.

Yet this is Sansa.  And Sansa rarely reacts the way he wants.

 _Sansa_ frustrates him.

Before she has a chance to respond he can already feel his hackles rise higher.  The flares now flames, muscles quivering and his heartbeat pulsing unevenly.  In contrast, her face remains so calm, emotionless even and completely under control.  Jon pulls in a deep breath, his nostrils flaring and releases it all in a huff. 

Looking down only briefly, her eyes sweep back up into his storm.  She licks her perfect lips, wetting them thoroughly and simply responds with a cocked head, “Aunt Lyanna and Rhaegar…”

His face must look incredulous because she doesn’t wait for his answer, “I heard Sam whispering something to Gilly and then we saw you on the green dragon and…” Her eyes flash as if he is riding one now and her voice drops resembling the howling wind, “It all makes terrible sense.”

When he swallows he pulls his eyes away from her, knowing he’s just confirmed her already keen suspicion.  And why wouldn’t she already know?

_She’s the smartest person I’ve ever met._

Speaking gently her monotone tenor stumbles and cracks on the last word, “You should have told _me.”_

More clouds cover his eyes and he knows she’s right, but her hurt makes his already edgy fingers drip with guilt.  The pitch sinks into his gut and he can hear the descent of his voice, “There was no time Sansa.” 

A lonely wind screams again, the room suddenly feeling colder.  Sansa’s hands fall slightly and hover over his chest.  Looking down she shifts to the side, her gray skirt brushing against his legs.  He can’t take his eyes away from her, still trying to determine what she thinks about the truth he so carelessly laid at her feet.

“Davos and Varys today in the Great Hall?” She asks the question as if she was simply speaking about which food he would prefer. 

He grinds his teeth in the face of her calm, “What about it?”

“They were talking about a union to unite the North and South.  Did they mean you and Daenerys?” She puts the cloth on the side of his face, holding his cheek and waiting for his reply.

Suddenly the room is so warm and she is so soft, he steps forward so full of regret.  The leather on his chest must be squeezing the life from him, because he can’t breathe. “Maybe they did, but I won’t,” he manages to whisper.  “I can’t.”

Now the look comes across her face, his failure to mask his anger seeps into her, affecting her own breath.  “So what happens afterward?” Her chin rises slightly, “When the wars are won?”

He can do nothing but shrug his shoulders, and her hand falls away.  The relief is instant and he sucks in a sharp breath, “I’m afraid to think about it.”

With a small curve of her lips her hands fall and rest against his chest.  She looks down and examines her hands on his body. “You’ve been consumed with this war for so long,” her voice softens a sunset pink setting on her cheeks.  “You deserve a little rest.”  

Warmth stirs, trembling out over his body.  Lips parting, he feels her step closer, his already heightened senses opening up the abyss of all his suppressed longings.  He thinks she grabs his leather but he can’t tell because all he feels are the confident words that sound like madness and delicious sin.

“We could marry now.”

Falling into the chasm, his head spins; his fists open and close pumping at his sides.  The look on her face is glowing, inviting and filled with an eagerness his body could match readily.  He practiced for so long his body unable to thwart its training and instead just reacts to his suppression.  Falling back into his pattern with her, he lets the look infuriate him, and he knows he will regret it as soon as he opens his mouth but he can’t breathe with her so close so he just whispers, “Did you learn that from Cersei too?” 

A wave of something breaks over her face but it is only there a moment.  Almost instantly her mask is back and her brow hardens but her eyes fill with tears.

In his gut, the shame burns hot and fast.  Around his neck his gorget is a vice, choking the life out of him, though it is what he deserves.

Releasing a breath, she takes a step away, her face impossibly serene and just stares.

It hinders his rejection, her reserve and calm when he’s just spit in her face. “I’m sorry,” he says honestly despite the edge still present in his voice.

“So am I,” she agrees with narrowed eyes. She connects her wrists behind her back and tilts her head, “I was so sure…” Swallowed up in a whimper that he knows would shame her, the rest of her words never meet the air.

He can’t just leave it there, his body slowly waking up from months of averted desires expressed as annoyed exasperation.  So he stutters out something that sounds like a whine, “What were you sure about?”

That gentle curve of her lips is back, and she releases her hands from behind her back.  Eyeing him from heavy eyes she speaks softly, “I don’t have a sword Jon… Or a dagger.  I don’t have powers to see the past.  But I do have the name Stark and I would give it to you.”

A rattled breath leaves him, shaking his chest and he doesn’t know if its relief, or guilt or joy that makes him ache.  But longing for this unimaginable truth begins to burn away his anger and his hands fall loose from their tight grip, hovering at his sides.  Her hips are inches away and he wants to grab them but he’s not brave enough, not like her.  And so he looks down, and sees his battle scarred fingers.  Are they Stark hands or Targaryen? The world blurs again, thinking about everything else that surrounds them.  

“I can’t take it,” he hears himself croak, but he doesn’t mean it.  How could he mean it?

The fire reflects off the glass in her eyes, now suddenly far away.  “I understand,” she says with more kindness than he deserves.  Her hands flutter aimlessly and she steps back, “Of course you can’t.”

When she turns away, it’s smooth and void of any malice.  Slumping slightly, her shoulders sag and he hates the distance between them, lengthening, tearing him in pieces from the inside out.

“Wait.”

She stops when she hears the pleading in his voice and he stares at her back for several heartbeats.  His own blood stirs as the walls of his solar seem to close in tight around them.  Why shouldn’t he? 

“Sansa…”

He doesn’t know who makes the first leap towards the other, but in a blistering flush of leather and wool he finds himself close to her again.  This time, his hand reaches out to her waist, and slides down over her hips, tugging their bodies together.  When they collide into each other, with a gasp from her pretty mouth and a groan from his throat, he is angry again but it’s the kind of insanity that makes a man burn and not strike.  So this time, instead of sharp words to hide behind, he softens too.  Meeting her gaze, his eyes search this wonderful unspoken truth between them.  Their lips simultaneously part, sharing the air as the red seeps up from their necks and oozes onto cheekbones.

Weaving up his chest, her hands travel along his shoulder and hesitantly fall at the back of his neck, twisting in his curls.  The blues of her eyes are hushed; the sea pulling him under, “You fought for me once.  Let me fight for you now.”

 Just words, but precise and faithful, and they sound like the hope he needs.  Gently taking her lips, the darkness of today lightens and he has never tasted anything else so sweet.

Jon doesn’t hate tomorrow.

It sounds so complicated and so simple.

But the truth always is. 

**Author's Note:**

> I don't think we will get a scene like this so I had to write it. XD


End file.
